Bucky didn't answer that one right away.

Maybe. I wanted to get a feel for them, first.

Hillary nodded and started the feed. Barely a few seconds in, and her eyes were already wide and her pupils narrowed to slits.

"That's it," she breathed. "That's exactly it, that's what was happening."

Alright, fine, fair enough. Steve hesitated for a few more moments. Let me know if either one of them leaves.

Lizzy nodded. "Yeah. That's what happened." She let out a quiet breath. "Remember those stories? I'm sure you had them in your high school too, everyone always talks about them. The soulmate stories."

"I heard about them," Hillary said, nodding. Her expression fell a bit. "I was also told not to get my hopes up, because even if I did have a soul mate, they wouldn't want a freak like me."

"Yeah, well, you're looking at the kings and queen of freakland," Liz said, shaking her head. "I think that's what we're feeling, Hillary. The soulmate bond thing. That's why I've heard Russian all my life, why you have nightmares about the cold, why this afternoon happened the way it did."

It did make a terrifying sort of sense, and Hillary was working on not freaking out again. Once a day was more than enough for her.

"I can't imagine any of them would want me," she said, a bit plaintively. "Any one of them is just so far out of my league..."

"I know." Liz pulled her down onto the bed next to her and hugged her. "Trust me, I know." Her Extremis roiled briefly under her skin, between her shoulder blades, and she squashed it ruthlessly. "But it's something, at least. Better than not knowing."

"Yeah, I guess so," Hillary said, cuddling into Liz's side. She sighed a bit. "We have almost no chance of ever getting near them, anyways, so I guess it won't matter too much, will it?"

"Probably not," Liz agreed quietly. "But hey, it's kind of fun to think about. We've got ties to two of the strongest and craziest people on the planet." She managed a smile at that.

"No kidding," Hillary said. "At least I have my heated blanket to get through the nightmares about the cold."

"Yeah. See, we'll be fine." Liz was trying to convince herself of that too. Though she didn't say anything, she knew that none of the Avengers would settle for someone like her, not when they had their pick of almost anyone on the planet.

Outside, Bucky had seen enough for the moment. One good thing about being a trained assassin and spy: he could read lips. And his stakeout had pretty much told him what he needed to know for now.

On my way back, he texted Steve.

Steve waited semi-patiently until Bucky was back in the tower to demand answers.

"How'd it go? What did you find out?"

"They do live together, Natasha was right about that," Bucky said, putting the scope back in with the rifle it had come off of. "Not a real big apartment, probably all they can afford." He glanced at Steve. "I wasn't kidding when I said one of them has scales. Probably a mutant, it would explain why they can't get a better place."

Steve nodded. He'd seen stranger things, after all, that wasn't a big jump for him.

"Alright. I can't feel anything at the moment, so I'm guessing no more freaking out." He raised an eyebrow. "You were there for a while, Buck, something was happening."

Bucky shrugged.

"Had to find a good vantage point," he said. He was quiet for a moment. "They know, Stevie. Or they suspect. They put two and two together when they saw a news feed from earlier. They don't know it's us, but it doesn't matter. They think we're out of reach."

"They... what?" Steve blinked at that. "Okay, how do you know they think that? Were you borrowing things from Clint again?" But he was already thinking over how they could fix this.

Bucky shrugged a bit.

"They were talking about it," he said. "I could see them from where I was. Clint's hearing aids wouldn't have helped, the window was closed."

Steve nodded. "Okay," he said. "So what we need now is to figure out how to reverse this, to figure out how to make this better."

"I'm not sure," Bucky said, sitting down next to him. "We might just have to go and talk to them and see what happens."

Steve nodded, running a hand across his hair and scrubbing briefly at his scalp.

"When did this get so complicated?" he grumbled.

"When you decided to be a punk and sign up for the Army," Bucky snarked, though he couldn't help but grin a bit.

"It didn't work the first few times," Steve said with a grin. "So that doesn't cut it, jerk."

"It's only because it didn't work the first few times that it worked the last time," Bucky pointed out, smirking. "You got their attention."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Something was going to work eventually," he said stubbornly. "Mr. I-got-drafted-and-promptly-went-into-sharpshooting-and-made-everyone-else-look-bad."

"Can't help what I was good at," Bucky said, shrugging a bit and grinning. "Besides, you get all the dames now. Or you would if you were any good with them."